Story Checklist

THE PEOPLE

Tony: another life changed by Jesus Christ. His video life story appears in The Well, a gospel-centered website housing video life stories of people transformed through receiving Jesus Christ into their life

Only salvation stories of born again Christians may be considered for inclusion. A born again Christian is someone who has: 1) personally repented of their sinful ways, and 2) has turned to the Lord Jesus Christ and trusted in His work ALONE for the removal of their sins.

We welcome salvation stories from non-English speakers, as long as English subtitles are provided.

We do not include stories from persons aged under 18.

THEOLOGY

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Stories must include details of the person’s life before and after their salvation, including what life challenges or life questions they faced prior to being saved.

AND

Stories must include a turning point/phase in a person’s life when their salvation occurred.

If at any time in the story, it is suggested or inferrable that salvation was secured by any works-based means e.g. baptism, then the story cannot be included.

AND

The person must refer to actively responding in belief to the Person or work of Christ as the means by which they were saved from their sin.

As a gospel-centered ministry, our preference is for clearer descriptions of repenting and receiving Christ. At the same time, we appreciate that the English language is complex and there is great diversity in how people communicate. In addition, there is the potential for some story-information to be lost because of video editing or original language translation.

Example theological statements that merit inclusion: “I believed Jesus died for me”, “I placed my faith in Christ”, “I received Christ”, “I trusted in Christ”, “I asked Jesus into my heart”, “I gave my life to Christ”, “I believed God died for my sins”, “I gave my life to Christ”, “I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior”, “I believed the gospel”, “I understood the gospel and what Jesus did for me”, “I saw my sin and need for Jesus”, God showed me all my sins.

We can’t accept stories where the person states “I became a Christian” without some sort of an explanation as to how that occurred.

Disclaimer – if a person’s salvation story is not included on The Well, it does not mean that we are contesting whether the person has a genuine saving faith in Christ, rather that there is insufficient information provided in their video to serve the purposes of The Well.

STORY CONTENT

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Stories may be of people’s baptisms, as long as they include their testimony which must meet our theological criteria.

We allow videos that are multi-subject, i.e. the person shares their testimony in the first portion of the video, then they continue to talk about another subject.

We do not include videos if the first five minutes consists of extraneous information without any reference to the person's testimony.

We allow videos that contain two salvation stories, as long as both people’s stories meet the theological criteria.

We do not include videos that contain more than two stories e.g. a video of 5 testimonies.

We do not include stories if the person places an over-emphasis on non-Biblical thinking post-salvation.

FORMAT

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We include salvation stories in video format only.

Videos must be publicly available via Youtube or Vimeo.

We do not include videos available only on Facebook.

Videos will not be included if there is something distracting the user from hearing the story, e.g. poor video quality, loud background noise.

Videos will not be included if there is something undermining the integrity of the story, e.g. b-role content.

We do not place any year limits on videos.

SOURCE

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We include salvation stories produced by other gospel-centered churches and ministries from anywhere around the world. There are no geographical restrictions.

We define gospel partners as churches or ministries who teach that: 1) we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. (Romans 3:23-25, Ephesians 2:8-9), and that 2) each person must repent of their sin and turn to the Lord Jesus and receive His free gift of forgiveness (Isaiah 55:7, Acts 3:19, Mark 1:14-15, John 1:12).

We do not include stories from gospel partners if they endorse female pastors or the practice of speaking in tongues within their corporate worship setting, as this is clearly prohibited by scripture (1 Corinthians 14:28,34)

CONTACT US

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Have you been involved in or know about high-quality video testimonies? We would love to hear from you. We are always looking to expand our collection on The Well to glorify God. Please go to our contact page to get in touch with our curator Gemma Sandberg.